Every Failure, a Step on Your Path. Zen Wisdom on Turning Obstacles Into Wisdom.

Facing Failure on the Path

Failure.

Everybody has experienced it.

From a very young age, we have learned that failing is bad and that we need to do everything possible to prevent it. And if we fail to prevent failure, it makes us feel like a big failure.

Once we are on a spiritual journey, this sense of failure deepens. We feel like failing whenever we fall short of an imagined ideal scenario in our minds.

When reality doesn't meet our expectations, we tend to blame ourselves, feeling ashamed, guilty, and disheartened.

Oftentimes, we can't own our failures, and we point the finger at others, blaming them for various situations in our lives. But this is a topic for another time; this time, let's focus solely on our perceived sense of failing on our spiritual paths.

Who doesn’t know this feeling?

There are times when we feel connected to our True Nature, where our lived experience reflects harmony and balance, and our thoughts, feelings, and actions seem like one unified movement; our lives flowing effortlessly from moment to moment.

And then there are times when we feel the exact opposite. No matter how hard we try or how much effort we put into our spiritual practice, things sometimes seem to go sideways. We seem to have lost the connection to a higher spiritual dimension in our lives, leaving us disheartened and leading us to doubt our lives, our spiritual practice, and our self-worth. We feel a significant gap between how we desire our lives to be and how it actually is. Instead of being at ease with everything that appears in our lives, we use anything that doesn’t match our expectations as a sign that we have failed.

We become impatient, angry with ourselves, lost in negative self-talk, lose our motivation, and start thinking that we are not as far along the spiritual journey as we would like to be.

Failures as Moments to Reorient Our Attention

Condemning ourselves is not the solution. Becoming disheartened doesn't really help us on our spiritual paths. We need to recognize that failing is a reminder. It is a reminder that we have strayed from our paths and that we need to reorient our attention.

For example, if you set out to meditate solely by focusing on your breath, you will notice that your focus gets interrupted by thoughts and feelings unrelated to your breath, your object of meditation.

Now, you can either feel bad about it, since you failed the main objective of maintaining awareness of your breath, or you can simply see it as a wake-up call to refocus on your breath.

You can see it as an opportunity to refocus on the object of meditation. It’s like doing a repetition in a gym. With each repetition you get stronger. Each repetition will increase your awareness as you shift your attention from something that binds you, like the feeling of failure, to something higher that you aspire to focus on.

You will become more aware of how your mind works, how it tries to keep you bound to the lower realms of your being, and you will learn how to free yourself from these lower instincts and rise above. Therefore, whenever you encounter this sense of failure, it's wise to use it as an opportunity to wake up again.

Whenever you feel discouraged, disheartened, or like you're falling behind, you can use it to your advantage.

Beyond Success and Failure: A New Perspective

These occasions do not only bring us back into the present moment, they will also show us where we lack insight.

Why is it that we want to run away from feelings of failure?

Do we have an ideal image of ourselves in our mind that reality doesn't match?

We artificially split reality into positive and negative aspects. Then we want to move towards the positive, and avoid the negative. Failure is something that is considered to be negative, but who said that? 

Did reality say that?No. Reality is impartial, it creates the good and the bad. Both coexist together. Only we attach to one aspect, and dismiss the other aspect. We try to impose our ideas on reality, but it doesn’t work. Reality always wins.

Instead of trying to avoid negative aspects in our lives, like the feeling of being a failure, we can shift our orientation towards them. We don’t need to push them away; we simply accept reality as it is. And if it shows up as a feeling of failure, we accept that too. We don’t need to force it to be something else.

We accept it as it is. And how do we do that?

Embracing Obstacles as the Path

In Zen, we say that obstacles don’t block the path, they become the path.

When we want to be aware of our true nature, we have to see reality as it is, not how we want it to be. So why would we dismiss so-called negative feelings such as the feeling of failure?

If we dare to pause, observe it, and become curious about it, another dimension within us will start to open.

Instead of getting stuck in a battle between what is and what we would like to observe, we see it in its totality and purity. We welcome it with open arms, and thereby transform it. We will come to recognize that this feeling of failure is not something to be avoided, but to be recognized and embraced. 

It will become our path. And whenever we walk on the path of reality, we open ourselves to greater wisdom and compassion. The path is not easy, but it's also not difficult. It's just what's in front of your eyes, waiting to be recognized and walked upon.

Therefore, turn your obstacles into your path. Whenever you feel like failing again, fail fully. Become the failure. Only then will you develop the capacity to be aloof, not bound by either the good or the bad. Only then will you become completely free, unattached from gain and loss, free from all obstructions.

I hope this was helpful. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

I wish you all the best. 

Your friend of the way.